A CAT owner is urging others to look after their felines after his beloved pets were poisoned.

Steve Batchelor’s cat Ziggy was found half-dead on his driveway in Blacksmith’s Lane, Dovercourt, on Tuesday.

When he was taken to the vets, the toxicology report showed that he had been poisoned by antifreeze and he had to be put down.

Another of Mr Batchelor’s cats, called Marley, uncharacteristically went missing last month and he believes cats are being targeted on the Long Meadows estate.

He said: “The report on our cat showed it was definitely antifreeze poisoning. I have no idea why anybody would want to torture an animal.

“They cannot even see the results of what they are doing.

“A lot of people don’t like cats and I can understand that, but if you don’t want them in your garden, there are better ways to try and make them stay away.

“Since it happened and I put something on Facebook, at least half a dozen other people have got in contact from around the estate to say they have had cats gone missing or died because of antifreeze.

“There are too many cases for it to have been a coincidence or an accident. If it was just one faulty system which was leaking, surely there would not have been this many.”

Mr Batchelor warned other cat owners to take their pets to the vets immediately if they noticed them drinking an unusually high amount, acting particularly lethargically or acting as if they are drunk.